


Come wayward souls

by malmanagement



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bible Quotes, Death, Ghosts, Gore, M/M, Snafu sees ghosts, Supernatural Elements, and so does Eugene, and there are a lot of ghosts in war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malmanagement/pseuds/malmanagement
Summary: Maybe it had been easier at the start. Maybe he got here and saw the spirits that needed him, swarms of them. Clueless and in pain. Maybe he remembered his Maman's words on a Shelton's duty on speaking the words that ferried  the dead where they were bound to go. But not anymore. There were too many dead in this war and Snafu was only one man. That is until an Alabama boy with eyes wide enough to see the dead ships in. Things change after that.





	Come wayward souls

When Snafu was small and shy and still called 'My Merry boy' by those grown ups who loved him, his Maman took him out to the swamp and showed him how to pray for the dead. 

“Lost souls,” she had whispered, holding him to her chest as they sat in the gently rocking pirogue and watched the faded wraiths of people long dead wade in the murky waters. “The last of the french blood that wants to rest no where but the place where they came from.” She explains in a hushed reverence that would shape the way Snafu would look at the dead for years. 

Merry looked at those souls with big eyes as the water lapped gently against the wood sides keeping them afloat.  
They looked as they died. Some sickly and gray, others still healthy but not whole, evidence of the accident that killed them hanging about their neck or dripping from their clothes. 

Merry held tight to his Maman's warm arms, but he was not afraid to look at them. His Maman had told him that death was natural and right. Everyone had a proper time for their flesh to end. Some were sooner than others, but that wasn't to be pitied. This life was just one stop in a grander journey and everyone had their ticket set to different times of departure. In this way, Death wasn't something to be frightened of, but respected. Some people didn't want to board their train, or they lost their way. Forgot where they were going, like these spirits in the bayou. When that happened, the Shelton's were called. They were like the ticket collectors. They helped people as they met their train. Reminded people where their seats were. They helped the dead move along to where they needed to go. 

“Why are they still here?” He asked, matching that same quiet way his Maman had spoken. They were dead and they had places to be, loved ones to greet. There wasn’t anything for them here in this old swamp.

“When they were alive, these people were not allowed to return to their homes,” She tutted. “Some things carry over into death. People get stuck in their own heads. Don't see what's in front of them. If only we had been here to tell them it was alright to go back.”

“Then tell them,” Merry commanded, tugging on his Maman's sleeve, “Say the words and send them home like you do.” He had watched her do so many times before. They sent for his Maman before they sent for the priest. Prayers over the dead by a holy man were fine, and most times they even worked, but a Shelton saw the dead and could definitively say whether or not your loved one lingered on.

When that happened, a Ghost needed Rites. Needed a push to admit they were truly nothing more than Spirit and air. That they would never again feel warmth, or speak to their family, or do much else except wandering around with their guts hanging out. Needed words to guide them on, to their maker, to their grave, and to their final end.  
Not many people knew that. Not many people at all could see the spirits that populated the earth. The veil that separated the living from the dead that had become untethered from the earth, was a finicky one. 

The Shelton's saw the Spirits, and they knew the words. Always had, and always will. At least that's what his Maman said. 

“For these souls it's now been too long,” She sighs. “Centuries dead and losing themselves now. They forget with time, and now they've forgotten too much. If I tried to send them on their way they wouldn't understand my words.” 

Merry nods seriously as they sway along through the water, watching the forever wandering dead with wide eyes. 

“That is why it is important we do quick work, my merry boy,” she nods and pats him on the head. “It is our duty as Sheltons to guide the dead. To leave them lost like this is a crying shame.”

Snafu will nod his little head at his Maman's words and think she is right. That everything she says about upholding a Shelton's duty is simple and noble and something he will take pride in doing one day. He wants to help the dead in their journey. Make sure no one else ended up like those poor lost souls in the swamp, their souls decaying for years and years until there wasn't anything left of the people they once were. 

He lost that kind of thinking, that sense of purpose, he went to War. 

No, War didn't let him keep those beliefs, those thoughts or warm feelings about his _duty_ very long at all.

In war death wasn't good or natural or anything he had been taught. It was grisly. Cheap. Felt pointless and like the squandering of good souls. 

How could someone respect that?

New boys kept on being shipped in just to die. 

The new recruits had set aside toy soldiers for a game of dress up. They put on their government issued costumes and puffed up their chests, playing make believe, mind full of the kind of heroics that they leaned in the nursery.

If only they'd had time to see what life was really like before shipping out. Maybe they wouldn't be so eager to hold their guns at their sides and march in step towards death.

But they hadn't, of course. Uncle Sam needed men, needed them young and stupid enough that they were ready to die for things they believed in but didn't understand.  
Maybe that was some kind of blood magic all on it's own. The dirt they stood on had soaked up enough, no question. Leaching through the sand of this spit of land and sinking out into the surrounding waters. Maybe it would wake something up down there. Maybe it would come up and swallow them whole, the Marines the enemy, the goddamn crabs. Take them all in one big gulp. One less island to fight over.

 

Maybe it would happen. But humans killed humans well enough on their own without the help of long slumbering sea spirits.

 

Things didn't often have such a neat, final end, Snafu knew. 

It was his job to watch each of the green boys sent straight from the arms of their Mama's, die.

Ever since he was a little boy Merriell had known the way a living thing felt. Could just sense it, feel it, just as easy and natural as other boys could dip their toes in the water and feel the cold squelch of mud at the bottom. Light and warm. Slippery and weightless. 

He'd feel them as soon as they stepped foot on land. Bright things. Some skittish around the edges, but hopeful. They think they're gonna end the war. Save the day. Go home with a medal and a grateful country saying 'oh, boy, you've saved us all'. Maybe they have a sweetheart waiting on them. Maybe they think that some love will be attracted with their new found manhood.

One by one he'd feel the lights go out. Or maybe a handful at a time, caught in the path of a tank or grenade.

Alone, or clutching the hand of a friend, or of a stranger. Didn't really matter too much at the end. Suddenly, so fast they don't even have time to notice as between one breath and the next they're gone. Or fading Slow. Wasting away from sickness. From fatigue. The corpsman called too late or simply incapable of care.

Yep, Snafu witnessed them all. And once that life light had gone out, he tried to give the proper rites, just like his Maman taught him. Say a prayer, or just a word if that was all he could manage, each time another life flies apart into nothing.

These boys died too violent and lost too simply lift off to the next plane on their own. And they were a _long_ way from home. Some began that long journey back to where they came from, being called by those they loved, but some couldn't manage even that. Too weighed down by what they had seen, what they had done. 

Snafu found it harder and harder to play that part his Maman had taught him as a child.

He was simply overwhelmed.

Maybe it had been easier at the start. Maybe he got here and saw the spirits that needed him, swarms of them. Clueless and in pain. Maybe he remembered his Maman's words on a Shelton's duty on saying the words that ferried the dead where they were bound to go. 

If there was ever a time like that, it was certainly passed by now and the feeling long forgotten. There was nothing noble about what Snafu did, nothing sacred about the words he used now. 

Snafu hated sharing his space with the living. He certainly didn't need an army of lost Ghosts clogging up his space too, bothering him while he tried to take a shit, making him look to shadows where the ruins of men stood instead of the living breathing ones that might actually kill him.

So he said what he could, where he could. Not that it always worked. Some deaths were too gruesome for any words to make a balm. Some Ghosts too stubborn to get the hint they were dead. 

Being a proud Spirit seeing Shelton fell to the wayside. 

He was just a soldier with as many deaths hanging on him as anyone else. Trying to survive the war where so many others hadn't.

**Author's Note:**

> There is quite a bit more to this, I just didn't have it all done in time.


End file.
